The Great Lone Land / A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America

by Sir William Francis Butler

Nothing cowed by the assumption of knowledge implied by my question, my fellow-traveller was not to be done. "All deuced fine," he went on, "I'll bet you a fiver you don't know who he was either!"

I kicked at him under the seat of the carriage, but it was of no use, he persisted in his reckless offers of "laying fivers," and our united ignorance stood fatally revealed.

Round the city of Chicago stretches upon three sides a vast level prairie, a meadow larger than the area of England and Wales, and as fertile as the luxuriant vegetation of thousands of years decaying under a semi-tropic sun could make it. Illinois is in round numbers 400 miles from north to south, its greatest breadth being about 200 miles. The Mississippi, running in vast curves along the entire length of its western frontier for 700 miles, bears away to southern ports the rich burden of wheat and Indian corn. The inland sea of Michigan carries on its waters the wealth of the northern portion of the state to the Atlantic seaboard. The Ohio, flowing south and west, unwaters the south-eastern counties, while 5500 miles of completed railroad traverse the interior of the state. This 5500 miles of iron road is a significant fact--5500 miles of railway in the compass of a single western state! More than all Hindostan can boast of, and nearly half the railway mileage of the United Kingdom. Of this immense system of interior connexion Chicago is the centre and heart. Other great centres of commerce have striven to rival the City of the Skunk, but all have failed; and to-day, thanks to the dauntless energy of the men of Chicago, the garden state of the Union possesses this immense extent of railroad, ships its own produce, north, east, and south, and boasts a population scarcely inferior to that of many older states; and yet it is only fifty years ago since William Cobbett laboured long and earnestly to prove that English emigrants who pushed on into the "wilderness of the Illinois went straight to misery and ruin."

Passing through Chicago, and going out by one of the lines running north along the shore of Lake Michigan, I reached the city of Milwaukie late in the evening. Now the city of Milwaukie stands above 100 miles north of Chicago and is to the State of Wisconsin what its southern neighbour (100 miles in the States is nothing) is to Illinois. Being, also some 100 miles nearer to the entrance to Lake Michigan, and consequently nearer by water to New York and the Atlantic, Milwaukie caries off no small share of the export wheat trade of the North-west. Behind it lie the rolling prairies of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, the three wheat-growing states of the American Union. Scandinavia, Germany, and Ireland have made this portion of America their own, and in the streets of Milwaukie one hears the guttural sounds of the Teuton and the deep brogue of the Irish Celt mixed in curious combinations. This railway-station at Milwaukie is one of the great distributing points of the in-coming flood from Northern Europe. From here they scatter far and wide over the plains which lie between Lake Michigan and the head-waters of the Mississippi. No one stops to look at these people as they throng the wooden platform and fill the sheds at the depot, the sight is too common to cause interest now, and yet it is a curious sight this entry of the outcasts into the promised land. Tired, travel-stained, and worn come the fair-haired crowd of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can devise--such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or Christian--clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray of mid-Atlantic roller, and dust of that 1100 miles of railroad since New York was left behind, but still with many traces, under dust and seediness, of Scandinavian rustic fashion; altogether a homely people, but destined ere long to lose every vestige of their old Norse habits under the grindstone of the great mill they are now entering. That vast human machine Which grinds Celt and Saxon, Teuton and Dane, Fin and Goth into the same image and likeness of the inevitable Yankee--grinds him too into that image in one short generation, and oftentimes in less; doing it without any apparent outward pressure or any tyrannical law of language or religion, but nevertheless beating out, welding, and amalgamating the various conflicting races of the Old World into the great American people. Assuredly the world has never witnessed any experiment of so gigantic a nature as this immense fusion of the Caucasian race now going on before our eyes in North America. One asks oneself, with feelings of dread, what is to be the result? Is it to eliminate from the human race the evil habits of each nationality, and to preserve in the new one the noble characteristics of all? I say one asks the question with a feeling of dread, for it is the question of the well-being, of the whole human family of the future, the question of the advance or retrogression of the human race. No man living can answer that question. Time alone can solve it; but one thing is certain-so far the experiment bodes ill for success. Too often the best and noblest attributes of the people wither and die out by the process of transplanting. The German preserves inviolate his love of lager, and leaves behind him his love of Fatherland. The Celt, Scotch or Irish, appears to eliminate from his nature many of those traits of humour of which their native lands are so pregnant. It may be that this is only the beginning, that a national decomposition of the old distinctions must occur before the new elements can arise, and that from it all will come in the fulness of time a regenerated society:--

"Sin itself be found, A cloudy porch oft opening on the sun."

But at present, looking abroad over the great seething mass of American society, there seems little reason to hope for required alteration. The dollar must cease to be the only God, and that old, old proverb that "honesty is the best policy" must once more come into fashion.

Four hundred and six miles intervene between Milwaukie, in the State of Wisconsin, and St. Paul, the capital and principal city of the State of Minnesota. About half that distance lies through the State of Wisconsin, and the remaining half is somewhat unequally divided between Iowa and Minnesota. Leaving Milwaukie at eleven o'clock a.m., one reaches the Mississippi at Prairie-du-Chien at ten o'clock same night; here a steamer ferries the broad swift-running stream, and at North Macgregor, on the Iowa shore, a train is in waiting to take on board the now sleepy passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc violently along over rough and uneven iron when he could select a stationary resting-place. On the other hand, it is a very great saving of time and expense to travel for some eighty or one hundred consecutive hours, and this can only be effected by means of the sleeping-car. Take this distance, from New York to St. Paul, as an instance. It is about 1450 miles, and it can be accomplished in sixty-four hours. Of course one cannot expect to find oneself as comfortably located as in an hotel; but, all things considered, the balance of advantage is very much on the side of the sleeping-car. After a night or two one becomes accustomed to the noise and oscillation; the little peculiarities incidental to turning-in in rather a promiscuous manner with ladies old and young, children in arms and out of arms, vanish before the force of habit; the necessity of making an early rush to the lavatory appliances in the morning, and there securing a plentiful supply of water and clean towels, becomes quickly apparent, and altogether the sleeping-car ceases to be a thing of nuisance and is accepted as an accomplished fact. The interior arrangements of the car are conducted as follows. A passage runs down the centre from one door to the other; on either side are placed the berths or "sections" for sleeping; during the day-time these form seats, and are occupied by such as care to take them in the ordinary manner of railroad cars. At night, however, the whole car undergoes a complete transformation. A negro attendant commences to make down the beds. This operation is performed by drawing out, after the manner of telescopes, portions of the car heretofore looked upon as immoveable; from various receptacles thus rendered visible he extracts large store of blankets, mattresses, bolsters, pillows, sheets, all which he arranges after the usual method of such articles. His work is done speedily and without noise or bustle, and in a very short time the interior of the car presents the spectacle of a long, dimly lighted passage, having on either side the striped damask curtains which partly shroud the berths behind them. Into these berths the passengers soon withdraw themselves, and all goes quietly till morning-unless, indeed, some stray turning bridge has been left turned over one of the numerous creeks that underlie the track, or the loud whistle of "brakes down" is the short prelude to one of the many disasters of American railroad travel. There are many varieties of the sleeping-car, but the principle and mode of procedure are identical in each. Some of those constructed by Messrs. Pullman and Wagner are as gorgeously decorated as gilding, plating, velvet, and damask can make them. The former gentleman is likely to live long after his death in the title of his cars. One takes a Pullman (of course, only a share of a Pullman) as one takes a Hansom. Pullman and sleeping-car have become synonymous terms likely to last the wear of time. Travelling from sunrise to sunset through a country which offers but few changes to the eye, and at a rate which in the remoter districts seldom exceeds twenty miles an hour, is doubtless a very tiresome occupation; still it has much to relieve the tedium of what under the English system of railroad travel would be almost insupportable. The fact of easy communication being maintained between the different cars renders the passage from one car to another during motion a most feasible undertaking. One can visit the various cars and inspect their occupants, and to a man travelling to obtain information this is no small boon. Americans are always ready to enter into conversation, and though many queer fish will doubtless be met with in such interviews, still as one is certain to fall in with persons from all parts of the Union--easters, Southerners, Western men, and Californians--the experiment of "knocking around the cars" is well worth the trial of any person who is not above taking human nature, as we take the weather, just as it comes.

The individual known by the title of "train-boy" is also worth some study. He is oftentimes a grown-up man, but more frequently a most precocious boy; he is the agent for some enterprising house in Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia, or some other large town, and his aim is to dispose of a very miscellaneous collection of mental and bodily nourishment. He usually commences operations with the mental diet, which he serves round in several courses. The first course consists of works of a high moral character standard English novels in American reprints, and works of travel or biography. These he lays beside each passenger, stopping now and then to recommend one or the other for some particular excellence of morality or binding. Having distributed a portion through the car, he passes into the next car, and so through the train. After a few minutes delay he returns again to pick up the books and to settle with any one who may be disposed to retain possession of one. After the lapse of a very short time he reappears with the second course of literature. This usually consists of a much lower standard of excellence --Yankee fun, illustrated periodicals of a feeble nature, and cheap reprints of popular works. The third course, which soon follows, is, however, a very much lower one, and it is a subject for regret on the part of the moralist that the same powers of persuasion which but a little time ago were put forth to advocate the sale of some works of high moral excellence should now be exerted to push a vigorous circulation of the "Last Sensation," "The Dime Illustrated," "New York under Gas light," "The Bandits of the Rocky Mountains," and other similar productions. These pernicious periodicals having been shown around, the train-boy evidently becomes convinced that mental culture requires from him no further effort; he relinquishes that portion of his labour and devotes all his energies to the sale of the bodily nourishment, consisting of oranges and peaches, according to season, of a very sickly and uninviting description; these he follows with sugar in various preparations of stickiness, supplementing the whole with pea-nuts and crackers. In the end he becomes without any doubt a terrible nuisance; one conceives a mortal hatred for this precocious pedlar who with his vile compounds is ever bent upon forcing you to purchase his wares. He gets, he will tell you, a percentage on his sales of ten cents in the dollar; if you are going a long journey, he will calculate to sell you a dollar's worth of his stock. You are therefore worth to him ten cents. Now you cannot do better in his first round of high moral literature than present him at once with this ten cents, stipulating that on no account is he to invite your attention, press you to buy, or offer you any candy, condiment, or book during the remainder of the journey. If you do this you will get out of the train-boy at a reasonable rate.

Going to sleep as the train works its way slowly up the grades which lead to the higher level of the State of Iowa from the waters of Mississippi one sinks into a state of dim consciousness of all that is going on in the long carriage. The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer, deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the-most northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far within the territories where yet the red man holds his own. Here, in the south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region. Far beyond the northern limit of the state it stretches away into latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey into together.

The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota, gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the Mississippi River, about 2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to the north, 700 miles along the stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a few miles above St. Paul, interrupt all navigation, and the course of the river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north west; the St. Peter's or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which lies West of Lake Superior; but it is not alone to water communication that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken "straight," the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a hurry, all tend to cut short the term of man's life in the New World.' Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. "Yes, sir, we live fast here," said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity of the surrounding prairies, its hotels--and they are many--are crowded with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die.